Tales of the Djinn: The Double (32 page)

I didn’t think that was possible, but Patrizio says if Mario infuses the nexuses with djinn spirits, the same as was done to his tattoo, they might stay powered as long as the life force he puts in them survives.

Also . . . I’m not sure you’re aware of this, but when Cara heard Mario’s plan, she said they should “use the twins.” She claimed they would keep the portals in synch with each other. That confused us until we saw you two. For everybody’s sake, you need to be sure they don’t get their hands on you.

~

“Would they dare?” Elyse asked as Balu finished speaking. The idea that Mario wanted to use her men this way was alarming.

“They might,” Cade said. “The potential reward would be worth a risk.”

“Where in the world did they find
twin
nexuses?” Leo asked. “Elyse’s grandfather and I had a hard enough time getting the single one in the cellar to function.”

Elyse knew the answer to that question.

“Cade’s friend Joseph made a mirror space,” she explained. “It wasn’t very big, but it replicated the portal too.”

“And the copy worked?” Leo said in amazement.

“We used it to escape Mario and Cara the first time they attacked us.”

“So Cara was meeting Mario at the brownstone tonight.” Leo furrowed his brow in thought. “I wonder how he got past my wards. I admit I’m not a genius at magic, but I’m more experienced than him.”

“Maybe that’s why he needed Cara,” Elyse theorized. “To add her power to his. Especially if he’s losing his human advantage.”

“Six names,” Arcadius suddenly interjected. Everyone looked at him. “Yasmin’s list had six names on it: six djinn teenagers who disappeared in the same span of time. There are only four of you.”

“We don’t know of any more,” Balu said. “Unless Cara stored them separately.”

“Could the others simply be missing and not abducted?” Elyse wondered.

Arcadius started to respond, but Cade broke in.

“No, they couldn’t,” he said, anger kindling in his eyes. “When I eavesdropped on Cara’s call, Mario said—and I quote—‘Tonight’s pair is resisting me.’ We never did track down the last two names. What do you want to bet he meant a pair of twins? He intends to sacrifice them, not by killing them but by imprisoning their souls alive in the nexuses. Mario and Cara didn’t want to divide and conquer us. They engineered tonight’s invitation from your aunt to get us out of the brownstone.”

“Shit,” Arcadius breathed. “We’ve been incredibly stupid.”

“We have to stop them,” Leo said. “A man like Mario can’t be allowed unrestricted access to your dimension. He’s already proven that.”

“We can help,” Balu said.

“Yes,” Patrizio agreed. “We’re feeling a lot better.”

Matching expressions of doubt entered Arcadius and Cade’s faces. Elyse knew they were thinking these were just kids, but they didn’t get a chance to voice their objections.

“You have to let us fight,” Jeannine put in. She’d taken Celia’s hand and was squeezing it fiercely. Truth be told, the angelic blonde looked pretty fierce herself. “We’re not letting a single other djinni suffer like we did.”

“Well,” Leo said, a hint of humor playing around his mouth. “It looks like you commanders have some new foot soldiers.”

~

Aunt June simplified matters by sleeping through their mass exodus. It was hard to know if it was the right choice, but they took the train back to Manhattan. If they’d flown, Leo and Elyse would have needed carrying. That would have drained the commanders’ strength—in addition to which, the kids could use all the recuperation time they could get.

As they waited on the platform for the next express to arrive, Elyse had a strong suspicion Cade and Arcadius wished they could ditch everyone and tackle this themselves.

“Thank you,” she said, taking Cade’s fingers and squeezing them.

He looked startled. “For what?”

“For not playing reckless hero. For doing this the smart way.”

“We hope it’s the smart way,” Arcadius said, injecting his personal dose of gloom and doom. He stood on her other side, a few feet farther off than Cade. “Look at those idiots.”

He jerked his head toward the teenage djinn. They’d discovered the vending machines and were magicking all the candy bars out of them. Elyse appreciated the fact that they were giggling. Her dad was keeping a casual eye on them.

“They’re strong,” Cade said. “And just this once they can probably use a sugar rush.”

“Hmph,” Arcadius said.

His gemlike eyes told a different story. He was worried about the kids. Elyse gave in to impulse and clasped his hand as well. He rubbed his thumb across her knuckles without looking around at her. He drew up his shoulders. When he dropped them back to level, he seemed to have willed away his unease.

“Very well,” he said. “We’ll do the best we can with the tools we have.”

The kids were all eyes and ears on the train, whispering comments to each other at the new things they saw. Her dad appointed himself to ride herd on them. Like most people who met Leo, they were soon won over. When they started whispering their questions to him, Elyse couldn’t help smiling.

Cade shook his head in bemusement. “I’m beginning to understand how your father survived two years on an island of ifrit. He could charm a tree stump if he put his mind to it.”

“He has a young spirit,” Arcadius said. “They recognize him as one of them.”

Elyse couldn’t tell if he approved or not. Perhaps he hadn’t decided yet.

The mood turned serious for the final leg of their journey, which they covered on the subway. Arcadius and Cade assumed command, cooperating without a hitch for once.

Climbing the exit steps to the street gave her an odd feeling. Scarsdale was a different world, but the four teenagers who bumped with them along the pavement proved even stranger worlds existed. She noticed they all had neon high-top sneakers. Whoever had shopped for them must have found a sale. Celia and Patrizio had drawn
C hearts P
on theirs. Elyse wagged her head. Though they were magical beings, they were still young and vulnerable.

Were Arcadius and Cade crazy for letting them join the fight?

They stopped short of the intersection near her brownstone, in a dim stretch between streetlights. Using the group to shield him from view, Cade changed and smoked around the corner to check on conditions. Though he wasn’t gone long, Elyse’s nerves tightened.

“Okay,” he said when he returned. “Mario has two watchers on the street: one sitting on a stoop and one in a darkened car. Neither seems particularly alert. They might not know the nature of what he’s doing, but we can’t count on it. You three—” He indicated Patrizio, Celia, and Jeannine. “If you’re up for shifting form this soon, I want you to take up positions on the roofs around the brownstone. Be sure you can see each other and the approaches to the house. If you think anyone has spotted you, just keep flying. I don’t want some human Mario has clued in about our race trying a spell on you.”

“We want to fight,” Patrizio complained. “Not sit on our thumbs watching.”

Cade leveled a look at him that his double wouldn’t have been ashamed of. “You’ve seen the people Mario does business with. Do you think we ought to let them sneak up on our rear?”

“No,” Patrizio admitted. “But—”

“No buts. You follow orders or I’ll have Elyse put you back in the lamps. I brought them with me, in case you’re wondering.”

Patrizio looked horrified at this. Elyse did her best to appear hardhearted enough to return them to their prisons.

“How will we stay in touch?” Balu asked. “None of us have scrolls.”

“Elyse will give Patrizio her cell phone.”

“Ooh,” Patrizio said, like this was exciting.

Elyse dug it from her coat and handed it over.

“I have one too,” her dad said. “With an earpiece. If Patrizio speaks softly, only the person wearing it will hear.”

Cade and Arcadius exchanged looks.

“Cade will take it,” Arcadius said. “I expect he has experience with these devices.”

“
I’m
coming with you,” Balu said, trying to make it sound like this wasn’t a question. “We have a stake in this. You can’t keep all of us out of the line of fire.”

“I’m allowing you to come provisionally,” Arcadius said. “I know you’re motivated. Now I’m counting on your nerves being as steady as your sister’s.”

Elyse thought reminding Balu his family had at least one admirable member was a good strategy. The young man squared his shoulders.

“I won’t let you down, sir,” he promised.

Balu nodded for the others to do as Cade instructed. They must have been feeling better, or maybe it was the sugar rush. They poofed away with no trouble.

“What’s our best point of entry?” Arcadius asked.

“Back courtyard,” Leo said. “The door there leads to the basement unit, which gives us access to the nexus. The scouts Mario posted shouldn’t notice us entering, especially if you two airlift myself and Elyse in.”

“We could do that,” Cade said. He looked at Elyse.

“I’m up for it,” she said.

They checked the small one-way street for approaching cars or other witnesses. Finding none, Cade swept her up in his arms and shifted into a man-shaped cloud in nearly the same second. She gasped but didn’t have time to lose her nerve. She zoomed into the air like she was levitating. Cade’s smoke form felt like an extra thick, extra tingly wind. The sense of speed was exhilarating. Up the nearest building’s brick side they went, then over a line of roofs. Arcadius was carrying her father in similar fashion a few body lengths away. Because it was dark and Arcadius’s smoke was sooty, only the most alert observer would have seen anything.

She looked back to see if Balu was following. His vaporous shape was barely visible.

It must be amazing to be able to do that,
she thought. It was pretty amazing to be flown around by someone who could.

They landed in the small enclosed courtyard in less than fifteen seconds. The djinn changed back into solid form. Elyse’s dad didn’t try to hide his grin, so she knew he’d enjoyed the ride. Naturally, he wasn’t fazed. He dug out his keys as quietly as he could and opened the rear entry.

Cade gestured to the rest of them that he would go first. He’d been here before and knew the territory. Arcadius could follow up the rear. Once again, Arcadius didn’t argue. Like Cade, he drew a dagger he’d hidden in his clothes. The two commanders were on the same page now.

The basement apartment didn’t take up the whole cellar. The passage that led to it from the courtyard was draughty. As they slipped silently along it, the coldness of the air came as no surprise. Also familiar, though for different reasons, was the creeping sensation that rippled across her skin. Elyse identified it as the effect of dark magic: the same not-right vibe that had repelled her from the dollhouse. The further they went, the stronger the impression got—until she felt as if she were swallowing something noxious every time she breathed in.

Cara must have nerves of steel to tolerate Mario’s practices.

They entered Cade and Joseph’s former apartment without turning on the lights. A muted glow stretched through the bars of the street door window to where they stood.

Good old New York,
Elyse thought.
Never completely dark.

Djinn eyes needed less light than hers. Her companions glanced toward the living room/kitchen combo in the front. A hallway led from that space to the bath, followed by the door to the courtyard passage, the single bedroom, and the now unsecured entrance to the mechanical room. This door gave access to the unfinished portion of the basement. Prior to his “demise” in the volcano, Elyse’s father put a magic lock on the brownstone’s portal. He’d hidden the key in a screw for this very door. The hiding place was subtle and handy and very much in tune with her dad’s humor.

Of course a key would be in a door. Where else would anyone put it?

With Cade’s help, Elyse had discovered her dad’s secret. The fact that the door was now off its hinges said Mario had too. Cade noted its dismantled state but only grimaced in response.

He signaled the others that he was going to inspect the room across from them. This was the single bedroom, where Joseph had put the entrance to the mirror space. The mirror space duplicated parts of the cellar . . . with djinn-style improvements. Everything in it was cleaner and more beautiful and just a bit sparkly. Because most humans wouldn’t suspect the bolthole was there, Joseph had intended it for emergencies. Mario had learned of its existence during their last escape. Cade went in, presumably to check the status of the twin nexus.

He couldn’t have explored very far. He was gone for less than a minute. When he returned, he spoke very quietly. His voice sounded tight, as if he didn’t like nastiness in the atmosphere any more than Elyse did.

“No one is in the copied part of the cellar. Mario must be performing whatever ritual he’s doing on this side.”

“That is bad, bad mojo he’s working,” her father said—unnecessarily.

Cade nodded. “I think we need to stick together to approach them. If we try to attack singly, Mario will pick us off.”

“Cara is his weakness,” Arcadius said. “He needs her humanity to shore up his magic. And he’s in love with her. She should be our first target.”

“I’ll take my niece,” Leo volunteered. “I’m human too. Her magic won’t disable me.”

“All right,” Cade said. “Balu, you stick with him.”

“What about me?” Elyse asked. Her voice was a little rough but at least it didn’t shake. Cade touched her cheek gently.

“Arcadius and I would like you to do a protective spell, to lessen Mario’s influence over us. We’ll make it a really simple one, much easier than sucking djinn into lamps.”

“Lock of hair charm,” her dad suggested. “I’ve done that for djinn friends before. You only need twine and a pair of shears.”

“Kitchen,” Elyse said and darted off to it.

She’d rented this apartment furnished, stocking it herself with basics. Joseph and Cade hadn’t moved things around. She found the items she needed in the drawer she expected. A roll of duct tape was in there too. She grabbed it. Given a choice, her dad would probably prefer muzzling Cara to killing her.